A highly influential twentieth century American graphic designer and art director, Paul Rand brought his informal approach to organizing space (often referred to the New York School) to the U.S. from abroad.
A highly influential twentieth century American graphic designer and art director, Paul Rand brought his informal approach to organizing space (often referred to the New York School) to the U.S. from abroad. Rand’s iconic corporate logo designs for major firms, included IBM, ABC, Morningstar, Inc., NeXT Computer, Yale University and (unfortunately) Enron.
In 1937 Paul launched his first career at Esquire magazine creating a spectacular series of covers for Apparel Arts a quarterly publication in conjunction with the popular magazine.
He also managed his time to art direct and create an impressive array of covers for other magazines, particularly Direction.
It’s obvious when we look back at these retro designs that Paul Rand’s covers broke with the tradition of American magazine design. This cemented his legendary status. From 1938 on, his work was a regular feature of exhibitions of the Art Directors Club and in 1972 he was inducted into the New York Art Club Hall of Fame.
Paul Rand was perhaps best known for ushering in the Modern approach to graphic design. His design experience has paralleled the development of modern design movements:
• Media promotion and cover design ran from 1937-1941
• Advertising design 1941-1954
• Corporate identification 1954 on
Collage and montage were often his tools in developing his designs for books and advertisements. His work echoed the likes of the Cubist, the Bauhaus and Constructivist movements.
“The composition for this is based on a cross, a plus sign. The plus sign has merit in itself: It’s a positive sign. It’s that convincing aspect of geometry. You can’t criticize geometry. It’s never wrong, It’s based on reality,”
Ad for the Container Corporation of America
“This was one of about four or five ads I did for the company’s “Great Ideas of Western Man” series. It was actually done on a piece of decayed wood. It was not a photograph. I presented the design on a piece of wood with a real nail going through the photostat of the imprint, and then it was photographed by the printer.”
“The Etruscans painted portraits of people who were dead on pieces of wood and used them as grave markers. It was these paintings that generated this idea. The stare from the face is one of fear, and the paper is nailed over the person’s mouth. So it conveys the idea of what censorship is all about.”
“This kind of design is very much influenced by Picasso’s Cubism, especially the collages that were made. It doesn’t copy anything; Cubism provides the grammar in which to work.
This stems from the idea of not copying, but actually using the elements as your design.”
Rand believed that type should be utilized to carry a message rather than solely decoration.
H.L. Mencken Book Cover
“It’s one of my favorite covers because Mencken was one of my favorite writers. The photograph was a rather poor representation of Mr. Mencken, but I felt I needed to use a picture of him. What do I do to take this out of the doldrums and make a good photograph out of a bad one?,” I asked myself.
"I decided to incorporate the idea of what he did. He was always making pronouncements and lecturing and criticizing. I thought this attitude of holding his hand up with a threatening finger would be nice way of expressing who this guy was. The way this thing was cut out tells you something about him that face alone would not tell you. The lettering being so fine and delicate, is in contrast to the representation of the whole composition, which is rather bold.”
You said it Mr. Rand, my mantra for my design students is good design is contrast.
See my favorite for design classes with Paul Rands view on the essential elements of art -
https://www.shortoftheweek.com/2009/03/27/paul-rand-film/
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